Well, I’ve now finished my short run of breakfast seminars on converting website visitors into customers, but I’m pleased to say that from April, there will be a full day workshop available. I promised in a previous post that I would write more about conversion and I thought I’d start with something really simple.

I’m running a test for a client that is simply testing the best wording and placement of a call to action, essentially “click here to make an enquiry”. Previously, the call to action was quite small and not very commanding (a link that started “Request more information…”), so I’ve created a few combinations of text and an email graphic to see what works best. That’s all – no fancy images, no major changes to page layout, just different text and an extra email icon.

These are the results:

As you can see, although the test is still running, we’re looking at an increase of over 41% with the best combo, from the original’s 3.58% conversion rate up to 5.07%, pretty much an extra 1.5%. That’s just from re-wording the link to the enquiry form!

Goes to show how even the simplest things can significantly affect conversion rates.

Happy new year to everyone! For many of us in business, this coming year could be the toughest for a long time – the recession has barely begun and incomes are likely to fall. That’s why I’m concentrating on maximising return on investment from online marketing at the moment, primarily by increasing the conversion rate of the websites I work on.

Being number one in Google and getting all the traffic in the world to your site won’t mean a thing if those people don’t turn into paying customers. Conversely, improving your conversion rate from 1% to 2% without getting a single additional visitor would mean doubling your site’s income. That’s why testing what works in turning visitors into customers is probably the single most important thing you can do to your website.

With that in mind, I’ve written a short(ish!) presentation for the Business Link eBusiness Programme called “Converting Website Visitors into Customers”, which I’ll be delivering around the East Midlands in January. You can find the date and venue nearest you here – it’s free to attend for small/medium sized businesses.

I will be writing about my experiences of what works and what doesn’t, as well as how best to test, in the coming months, as well as continuing to keep an eye on search engine optimisation, pay per click and all the other forms of online marketing. For now, I recommend you start by checking out Google’s Website Optimizer tool – free testing software to help improve your conversion rate. Happy testing!